How to search forums as a non-paying member.

Hello everyone,

I am not sure if this has been discussed but if it has, then this will be a refresher. For the most part I use 3reef.com, and Nano-reef.com for my research because they are smaller and I tend to like the people on them more than reefcentral. Yet, there is always that time where someone in one of these forums says "Go search reefcentral for this and you will find what you are looking for". My problem with this is every time I go to reefcentral and try to search I get the message below because I am not a paying member.

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Sorry. The search function has been temporarily disabled due to high server load. Please try your search again in a few minutes. Other site features will still be functional.

Check out our Premium Membership Page for higher priority access to the search engine as well as other nice features.
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Well, since I dont use RC all that much I am not going to pay whatever it is that they are asking. I would rather give my money to a site that I use more frequently. So I discovered a way to search forums like reefcentral without paying the membership. Also, this technique uses google so you are not robbing them of their precious bandwidth that they want you to pay for either.

So here is how to do it:

Go to google and type this formula into the the search bar.

site:website.com whatever it is I want to search for

Example: site:reefcentral.com overflow

Now, this method of searching is going to be a little less granular when it comes to finding exactly what you need because google will be searching the entire webpage instead of key areas like what the forum search looks at. So you may have to look a little harder, but it sure beats going through page to page looking for what you are researching.

 

Great idea !

 

Jason McKenzie just pm'ed me with a link on reefcentral that does this for you.

Reef Central Online Community

This information will still work for other websites as well though.

 

Eh...karma anyway for trying